Huge win for car owners! All TSBs to be made public.
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2006 Honda Element Owner Comments

Element

100,000 miles

A D V E R T I S E M E N T S

There's an electrical problem. The car sometimes will not start right away. We have to give it several tries and usually after 5 minutes it will start. We've already replaced the starter and problem still persists. We thought last recall would have fixed the problem, because this issue was mentioned. But, the same problem still continues after last recall.

Element

130,991 miles

The ignition lock cylinder failed suddenly, preventing any use of the vehicle. The wafers (equivalent to pins on tumbler locks) wore away such that the key no longer worked in the lock. The failure occurred such that turning the key in the ignition is impossible, and strands the driver and all passengers wherever the car is at the time. When the part failed, the vehicle was stalled on a roadway where speeds regularly exceed 30 mph and I immediately tried to move the car out of danger. The steering wheel locked and was impossible to unlock without turning the key in the lock cylinder. The car remained in the road for about a half hour until permission was secured to turn the car into the driveway where the wheels turning lead into, requiring pushing the car through two lanes of traffic. Once in the driveway, it took an additional hour for a tow truck to come (we were lucky the driveway existed at that location!). after towing expenses, dealership quoted repairs at around $800 for just repairing the ignition lock cylinder, and additional expenses for replacing all the locks on the vehicle so that one key would work on all locks on the car. I believe that this is a major safety concern because 1) the failure prevents use, or even controlled movement of the car being pushed (the steering wheel locks, and won't unlock without the key turning in the lock cylinder) in whatever situation the car is in, whether stalled on a roadway or parked, 2) there is no maintenance procedure prescribed to prevent this issue, 3) because of the design of the key/lock combination, this issue will happen eventually to all vehicles with this type of lock (sidewinder key), 4) there is little to no indication of imminent failure.

Element

miles

The contact owns a 2006 Honda Element. The contact received a notification for NHTSA campaign number: 14V351000 (electrical system). The contact stated that the part needed to remedy the vehicle was unavailable. The manufacturer was not made aware of the issue. The contact had not experience a failure.

Element 4-cyl

96,000 miles

I hit a deer last December and the only reason the insurance company did not total it was because the air bags did not deploy. There was just about $10,000 worth of damage to my car. After waiting a month and a half, traveling 18 hours & spending an extra $200 for travel to go get my car I finally got it back. Also, my car does not idle like it should. It will also go dead when I come to a stop. It doesn't happen all the time but it will happen in the middle of traffic and I will be stuck there for a few minutes.

Element

42,000 miles

Drove car on a 6 hr trip with one stop for gas during daylight hours therefore there was no need to turn headlights on. When reaching destination, headlights had turned on by themselves although the headlight switch on the steering column remained in the 'off' position and was never turned on by the driver that day. Car headlight warning would not sound when car was turned off and door open even though the lights remained on. Removed headlight fuse that night. The next day, inserted fuse and headlights were still on. Took to Honda dealership who replaced headlight relay but that same day headlights continued to turn on by themselves while car was turned off. Dealership replaced entire fuse box to fix the problem. Less than one week later, while driving the car will not go over3,000 RPM. Took to dealership who stated that the vtech sensor for oil pressure needed to be replaced. Was bought new in Aug 2006 so only has been driven by one owner for 4 years with dealer recommended maintenance performed.

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